


Fulcrum

by smolsarcasticraspberry



Series: Fulcrumverse Alternative Canon [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, canon can eat my entire ass, canon reset, me fixing everything in 3000 words? more likely than you think!, shallura - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 06:07:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17177348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolsarcasticraspberry/pseuds/smolsarcasticraspberry
Summary: as Allura enters the rift between realities to save all of time and space, she meets an old friend - and learns that they can both have a second chance.OR: the one where i take VLD's canon sloppy lore and worldbuilding, bend it to my will, hit a canon-compliant timeline reset button, flip off LM and JDS on my way out, and everyone gets to live.





	Fulcrum

**Author's Note:**

> i didn't watch S8 (self-care tbh) but i of course heard about it. this fic started life as a random theory thrown into the group chat, and then i liked the idea so much i polished it up and here it is. is this slightly salty? you betcha. am i going to apologise for that? no. no i am not. anyway here it is.

She should feel at peace.

She tries to act the part, for the benefit of the friends she is leaving behind. But when she turns her back on them to walk with Honerva into the whiteness of the rift, the mask slips. There is no peace in this. Only pain, and anger, and resentment.

She's too young to die. She doesn't _want_ to fade away into nothing.

It should be the greatest of honours. How many people can say they gave their very life force to save the whole of created reality? And so this should be an honour, and she should feel glad and brave and proud and content with her choice. She resists the urge to glance behind her, because if she looks back at everything she's giving up, the fury will burn out of her and consume everything within reach.

She doesn't want to die. Not like this. Not making up for other people's stupid, selfish mistakes. She wanted to live and breathe and thrive and now she can't, now she's just dust, she's nothing but an energy supply - a power core - a sun burning herself out to keep everyone else warm.

She hates it. Even though she shouldn't.

She is going to die, and become nothing, and all she feels right now is resentment. The calm of acceptance eludes her. Death itself will not hurt, but the bitterness stings like a thousand tiny cuts.

The world fades around her. Honerva drifts away, even though there is no true sense of distance in this strange and lifeless place. Perhaps the witch is still close; perhaps she is lightyears away. Such a question is meaningless here. An aching silence falls around her.

This is the end, then. Restless and resentful though it be.

A figure appears up ahead. A patch of bright white light fades slightly, and a form takes shape - a person. A _human_.

 _Shiro_.

He solidifies in front of her, clear and real. But it _can't_ be. He is not here - he's back in the real world, surely.

But this is not the Shiro that she left behind: white-haired, strangely subdued, polite yet distant ever since she pulled him from the Black Lion. And this is not the Shiro who turned up half-dead in a battered Galra fighter: angry and troubled and pushing everyone away, and ultimately revealed as an unwitting spy and an imposter.

This is the Shiro she remembers from when they first met; the Shiro who disappeared and never really came back.

His hair is black, skimmed short at the sides, with that distinctive shock of white that hangs over his brow. He has the Galra prosthetic, still, not the arm she made for him on Earth. And he wears the clothes she first saw him in - the tight vest that leaves little of his impressive physique to the imagination.

But it's his eyes that convince her that this is him - really, truly Shiro - not some clone or some ghost or some figment of her imagination. He smiles at her, and his dark eyes are warm and lively and yet gentle, all at once; full of playful fire.

It's him. _Her_ Shiro. He's here.

"Hey, Princess," he says.

Tears blur her vision; make the light around her fracture into a thousand crystalline fragments. She barely registers moving; she is just there, in front of him, the distance between them vanishing into the emptiness of the void. She flings her arms around his neck and hugs him, and he pulls her into his embrace and holds onto her, his head tucked into her shoulder, breath warm against her cheek. He holds her, and everything that felt wrong and off-kilter about the universe over the last few months - _years_ \- fades away. Everything is right, now. He's here, at last. It's really him - really _Shiro_ \- and he's here with her, somehow, at the unjust end of all things.

"It's you," she sobs into his neck. "It's really you."

"I was waiting for you," he whispers in her ear, and his arms tighten around her, and she breathes in the scent of him and knows that everything will turn out alright.

If she must die… at least she will die with him.

His hand finds the nape of her neck and he pulls away to look at her. The softness of his gaze is so wonderfully, perfectly familiar - and she _missed_ that - missed the gentle way he always looked at her. That disappeared, too, and she gave up hope of ever seeing it again. His hand slides around and he brushes the tears from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

"How are you here?" Allura asks.

He gives her a lopsided smile. "I've been here since I died in the battle with Zarkon. The White Lion brought me."

Allura frowns. She stays in the comforting circle of his arms and lets her hands rest on his chest. She can feel a heartbeat under her palm, she realises. He's so gloriously _alive_.

"But I pulled you out of the Black Lion," she says. "You were dead. I… I brought you back."

He gives her a wry smile - almost apologetic.

"You tried," he says softly. "But I was already gone by then. The part of me left in the Black Lion was just a fragment. Like a ghost."

Allura's heart sinks. And yet it explains so much. He was never quite the same, after all.

"The clone was still alive," Shiro goes on. "I think Black's memory of me merged with him. So he became both of us, almost. But I've been here since I died. I'm sorry, Princess."

Allura nods. She doesn't trust herself to speak around the lump in her throat. Instead, she buries her face in Shiro's chest and holds onto him, as if she can fasten herself to his soul and stay with him as she dissolves into nothing but pure energy. Perhaps that's not the worst way to go.

"I missed you so much," she whispers.

He leans down and kisses her forehead, and she uncurls and looks up at him.

She kissed him, once. On Olkarian. Before that last, fateful battle where everything went so wrong. He found her on the balcony, staring out at the teludav they built, lost in thought; and as they spoke of their fears and hopes and anxieties he put a gentle hand on hers and assured her that everything would work out. And she leaned up and kissed him - just briefly, just a brush of the lips - and told him it was for luck, and let the deeper meaning remain unspoken. Back then, he looked at her like he knew that they both wanted something more, and his eyes held a promise: to come back to her, and to revisit that urge to reach out and connect and draw each other close.

And then he disappeared, and returned to them so changed; and he never looked at her the same way again. The softness in his eyes never came back; the gentle humour of his smile vanished. She didn't know how to understand the sudden distance between them. She nursed the heartbreak and regret alone.

But here - now - he looks at her like he did before. Silent words hang heavy in his eyes, and he is full of want and need, and his smile is gentle and understanding and beautifully sincere. She knows that look in her very soul.

"We have to fix things," he says.

"That's why I'm here," she says. "I can use my life force to repair all of reality. To save everyone."

He nods. "I know. But there's one specific spot we have to fix. There's one point where it all went wrong. If you mend that… everything else falls into place."

"What are you talking about?"

He steps back, and his hand slides down her arm until he curls his fingers around hers. He turns his head, and she follows his gaze.

A patch of whiteness blurs and shimmers, and then visions appear. A battle. Voltron - the Lions - and Zarkon's dark mecha suit burning through the sky. The blazing sword. And ugly purple lightning bending and twisting over Voltron's form.

Allura knows it, all too painfully well.

"This is when you died," she says quietly. Shiro squeezes her hand, and she looks up at him, tears pricking her eyes.

"The White Lion brought me here, somehow," he says. "It told me about this moment. Apparently… when I died… that's what messed everything up."

He says it with a note of self-deprecation. Even here - even now, after everything - he doubts his own importance and worth.

"I always knew you were special," Allura says. "You were the key to everything."

He scrubs the back of his neck with his free hand, and Allura could swear he's blushing slightly.

"Apparently." He smiles shyly. "That's what the Lion said, anyway. You have to fix this part, so that I don't die."

"I can do that." And she can. Here, where time and space are mostly abstract concepts, she understands exactly how to fix it; how to bend her power and energy just _so_ , to tweak this reality into a different form. And that will fix everything. All the bad - all the pain - all the worst of it - she can remedy it all, just by changing this one moment.

"What will happen to us?" she asks.

The vision of that one, crucial point in spacetime fades and dims, and Shiro turns back to face her. He keeps hold of her hand, and toys with her fingers.

"I think we merge back into that timeline," he says. "The White Lion said we'd get another chance, and I think that's what it meant. We'll wake up there, in that moment, after it's fixed."

Allura nods, slowly. That seems about right. The clarity of this place helps her to understand how it all works. She'll change that one vital point in time, and then none of this will have happened - and instead they will fall back into that changed timeline - into a space that will open up for them, as soon as she alters their fates. It makes perfect sense. She can _feel_ the tug of it; the pull of quintessence towards that one knot in the multiple, endless timelines of reality. Now that Shiro has pointed it out, she's painfully aware of it. One moment - one wrong turn - and it threw everything out of alignment. It upset the balance of reality itself. If she can just put it back… she can save everyone. Including herself.

"Will we remember any of this?" she asks. "I feel like we won't. It will just fade away."

"I was thinking the same thing," Shiro says. "We probably won't remember. It'll be like none of this ever happened."

"Alright." Allura takes a deep breath, and flexes her fingers by her sides. She knows what she needs to do. She feels that knot in the energy around her - that singularity, the instant that fractures reality and creates the cracks that damage everything else. And she knows how to mend it. She squares her shoulders, and looks up at Shiro.

"We're going to wake up in the middle of a battle," she points out. "Are you ready?"

"Not yet," he says.

He smiles, and steps up close to her. His eyes carry that familiar look: warmth, desire, hope, all blended together. Here, in the crystal clarity of this empty, liminal space, there are no secrets. What they want - how they feel for each other - it is all laid bare, and Allura has no desire to hide it.

Shiro leans down and kisses her, his lips a delicate heat against her own, and she wraps her arms around him and holds him close and lets the kiss deepen. She tastes him and feels him and tries to memorise him; to write the shape of him onto her soul so that she can keep him with her always. He kisses her perfectly, like a dream; and she pulls away in a blissful haze.

"We won't remember this," she says with a smile.

Shiro grins, and runs his fingers along her jaw. "Then we'll have to find each other again when we get back."

"I know what you're like," Allura tuts at him. "You won't act on this feeling. You'll just gaze at me from afar and drown in hopeless longing and never do anything about it."

He laughs, and the sound reverberates through her where she stands in the warmth of his arms.

"You're forgetting that in this battle, I thought you died," he says. "That changes a man."

Allura laughs, but there's a heaviness behind it. This battle was hard on both of them, and they are about to step back into that realm of pain and loss and uncertainty. She leans her forehead against Shiro's and holds onto him, willing him to stay with her a little longer - because once they put things right they won't remember that they met here, in perfect understanding, in spite of everything.

"Promise me we'll find each other again," she whispers. "Promise me?"

Shiro takes her face in both his hands and kisses her, and she wishes it would last forever.

"I promise," he says, the words brushing her lips. "We'll always find each other."

She embraces him one last time, and buries her face in his shoulder. He holds her close and tight, so beautifully desperate and needy, and he feathers tiny kisses into her hair.

"I promise," he whispers again. "I'll find you, no matter what. I'll always find you."

She takes a deep breath, and pulls away.

"Ready?" she says, and Shiro nods. She holds both his hands and meets his gaze, because he is her tether and her anchor and her way back to a better world.

She concentrates, and reaches out with her power. She senses that knot of wrongness, and tugs at it; feels it loosen - shift - change beneath the influence of her energy. Her life force flows over that one broken moment, and she finds the fundamental flaw hidden deep inside that tangle of ugly energy. Shiro's death. The death that should not have been. But she can change it. She can make it right.

Her awareness starts to fade as her life force spreads thin, but Shiro's hands are still firm and solid in hers; his grip still binds her tight to his soul. She pushes all her willpower towards that one, significant change, and feels the tides of history and time bend to her command.

The knot unravels. The timeline stretches out, dangerously fractured and delicate - and then it snaps back, into a new shape.

A shape where Shiro lives.

She is barely more than stardust, now. She can feel herself drift away. But as the timeline pivots and turns and mends itself, it calls to her - pulls her - draws her in like a black hole, dragging her back out of this realm of light and into a new, brighter reality.

 

The Castle hums and shakes beneath her feet as Allura powers up the wormhole and calls the Paladins home. Zarkon's ship is back online and they're out of time. They can only hope that the blazing sword of Voltron took out Zarkon as well as his armoured mecha; for now, safety is the top priority. They need to escape.

But the Black Lion comes back slowly, as if she is limping or in pain. Can the Lions feel pain? They certainly experience distress, and Black appears to be… upset, right now. Allura senses it distantly. Her life force is still connected to all the Lions, and she picks up on Black's confusion and fear.

Keith turns around in the Red Lion, and Lance follows him in Blue. They take hold of Black and help her return to the Castle, even as the roar and chaos of battle threatens to engulf them. In the turmoil, the Castle powers up and slips away through the wormhole, and Allura sighs in relief.

She races down to the Black Lion's hangar to see what's wrong, and she meets the others there - all hurrying, all looking worried and scared. Why is Black slumped over? What's wrong with the Lion? With Shiro?

The cockpit door slides open, and she takes in the unmoving figure slouched in the seat. The black bayard rests in the Lion's console, idle and still, and Black's power dips low and fizzles out.

"Shiro?" she calls. She rushes forward, around the seat, and pulls his helmet off.

He lies there, too still, and for a horrible moment she fears he is dead. Keith clutches at his arm; Hunk and Pidge and Lance stand behind the chair, tears in their eyes. Allura places one shaking hand on Shiro's neck, silently begging the ancients and the divine and the universe itself for a miracle.

She finds it. A faint, delicate pulse in his neck; a thrum of warmth and life under her fingers. That final blast hurt him badly, but it didn't kill him.

"He's alive," she gasps, tears spilling unexpectedly from her eyes. _He's alive_. He's here and he's breathing and his heart still beats. He's alive.

The universe seems to shift subtly around her, and for a moment she feels a strange sense of disquiet. As if somewhere, just out of sight, another version of this moment exists. A version with an empty chair and an unanswered question. A version where nothing will ever be right ever again.

She blinks, and takes in Shiro's unconscious form, and the discomfort fades away. He's here. He didn't vanish. Everything is right where it should be.

Perhaps some other reality exists where Shiro never came back from the battle, and the joy and hope drained out of her world and never came back either. For some reason, she imagines that timeline spinning out and away into an endless multiverse, jagged and wrong and fractured. But here and now, she has Shiro, and that's all that matters. The rest will work itself out. She knows that, somehow, on some bone-deep level that she cannot explain.

"We need to get him into a healing pod immediately," she says, and the Paladins straighten up and take heed of her words. There's still a lot of work to be done, and their hardship is not over yet. But she will have Shiro by her side throughout that struggle, and so her soul can rest easy. Their fates are entwined together. She always suspected it, but now that knowledge settles into her bones like an inviolable law of the universe.

He will always come back to her. And she will always come back to him. There is no realm in all of time and space where they will not find each other, because he is her tether - her anchor in an uncertain universe. And as long as she has Shiro by her side, she knows that everything will turn out alright.

**Author's Note:**

> so this is a sort of canon fix-it of sorts, and it serves as the jumping-off point for... pretty much any canon-esque ideas i have for VLD from now on. in this 'verse, Shiro comes out of the battle badly injured and in a coma. Allura flies the Black Lion whilst he's recovering. through bonding with Black, she learns that Shiro's soul is trapped in the astral plane, and she journeys to Oriande to learn how to restore his soul to his body. when she ventures into the astral plane to bring him back, he kisses her (again lol) and then when he wakes up he doesn't remember it but she does.
> 
> aside from that, i don't have much firm 'canon' for this 'verse. (fulcrumverse? fulcrumverse). but this AU exists because i still like to occasionally write canon-esque VLD stories and i absolutely refuse to fux with the bullshit Lion Switch, so here's the starting point for... any of my "canon compliant" VLD works past, present, and future. i can't promise i'll ever write a full-on fix-it fic in this verse, but that's the idea of it.


End file.
